


the truth about stories

by mothicalcreatures (laelreenia)



Series: Demons and Detectives [3]
Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: College, Gen, Internal Conflict, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 08:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures
Summary: In college, Chris uses an assignment to explore the things that happened during his time at Count D's pet shop when he was a kid.





	the truth about stories

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Thomas King's _The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative_

 

“Two Realities: Liminal Space and Dual Existence in a Chinatown Pet Shop.”

Chris stared at his computer screen and sighed. He’d been trying find a way to talk about his experiences at Count D’s pet shop for the past fifteen years, and just hadn’t been able to. Animals who were people and could talk, who could understand him when he couldn’t speak. Eventually Leon had been able to hear him and them too, though he never could see them, but Chris had never been able to find a good answer why. When he was six it was “trauma” and an “active imagination.” At ten it was “worrying that he wasn’t growing out of it.” So he’d stopped talking about it, but in high school he’d tried to write a paper about it, and his teacher, concerned about unacknowledged childhood abuse, had contacted his aunt and uncle. Sam had seen the people too, but as they’d grown up she’d fallen to the, “it was all fun and imaginary.” Chris couldn’t talk to Leon about it either, because even if he _could_ get Leon to outwardly acknowledge all the weirdness, Leon had disappeared.

Now about to graduate college, Chris had found himself in a class that gave him another chance to write about it. He’d told his professor he wanted to write about liminal space in relation to childhood experiences in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, but that barely scratched the surface in describing what had happened.

Chris had tried several times over the past few days to start this paper, but it just wasn’t happening. How did you write a real world analysis about something that seemed like it was fiction?

There was a creative option for this paper, but Chris tended to avoid those because he didn’t exactly consider himself the most creative person. In academic writing he excelled, but other kinds of writing not so much. Still thatmight be what he needed here. He didn’t have to write any fiction at all, buthe could tell his story and then analyze it like it _was_ fiction. Autobiographical fiction was a thing, right?

 

“I stopped being able to see the people the moment I first spoke again after over a year of silence. From then on I could only see them as the animals they always were.”

 

It was the result of the deal he’d made with Shuko, that’s what Count D had said. Chris had been six and hadn’t even realized he was making a deal when Shuko told him, “Don’t close yourself off to the outside world.” What was it about being part of the outside world that barred him from Count D’s world? Sam had been able to see everything too, though only briefly, and she’d discounted it relatively quickly as they grew up. Was it because they’d been children then? That would explain why Leon hadn’t been able to see anything.

Chris decided to focus on Sam. She’d grown up and discounted everything as childish imaginings. That denial was a different sort of not-seeing than Leon had experienced, but it had made Chris think that there was something otherworldly, that only some could see. It was like how in _My Neighbor Totoro_ , it was only May and Satsuki could see the dust sprites, Totoro, and the Cat Bus. They were children who hadn’t lost their sense of wonder about the world. Hadn’t been exposed to the bias of the world. Leon had told Chris that Count D was under investigation for crimes that… well, they’d never amounted to anything. As far as Chris could tell, without having Leon around to ask, that had been how their relationship had started.

 

“I can’t say if it was something that Count D did, or if it was just the rules of the otherworld, (various mythologies have creatures who are very stringent about rules) but something changed when I made my return to the outside world. I lost access to all the people who were the animals. I lost access to the back rooms of the pet shop that housed an entire ocean and the three headed dragon who was my best friend.”

 

Suspicion and bias. Racism. Chris knew the history of the Los Angeles Chinatown. The original razed to build Union Station, and rebuilt as a tourist attraction that gradually became a new Chinatown proper. Leon as a police officer, targeting Count D without having substantial evidence, had followed in a long tradition of baseless policing in Chinatown. Had that sort of suspicion and danger from Leon kept the realities of pet shop concealed from him? People who wanted or needed to see something from the pets in Count D’s shop, could see them, but that had never lasted.

When Chris had left his sister’s had seen Ten-chan as him and when the real Chris had appeared, Ten-chan had been just a little fox with nine tails. So magic was hidden in plain sight. But what was the difference between Chris and a customer who came looking for a pet and came away with something that looked like a person?

 

“There always seemed to be some lesson taught to those customers who came in seeking something ‘exotic,’ many times it would seem that lesson ended in death. When my brother left, he left his belongings with me, and in time I discovered his ‘evidence’ file against Count D, full of circumstantial deaths of people who had purchased pets at Count D’s pet shop. Newspaper clippings often accompanied by copious notes that helped me make sense of things.”

 

A couple killed by flesh eating rabbits, because they couldn’t say no to something, a “rabbit,” the mother claimed was their daughter, and they’d had a hand in their actual daughter’s death apparently, because they couldn’t say no to the real thing either. A lot of Leon’s early notes had been nothing but angry exasperation at his inability to get evidence that didn’t sound insane or like a very dark fable/fairytale.

Had _he_ been subject to a lesson? Not one of morality, but learning how to speak again? Or was it truly a matter of children being untainted by the realities and biases of the world? Was Chris marked as no longer safe when he left the pet shop, because he was returning to a world that didn’t believe in magic and hated and feared difference?

Not for the first time Chris wished he’d been older and/or kept better records of his time at Count D’s pet shop. All he had now were foggy childhood memories and Leon’s frenetic notes. Maybe he should just become a police officer himself so he could dig up Leon’s old case files.

 

“While people in my life debate the reality of what did and didn’t happen when I lived with my brother, and spent most of my days at this pet shop, what there is no debate about is this: For over a year I lived life with a split perception of reality. I saw these animal-people as people, and they were, unquestionably, my friends. While other people only saw what they wanted to as it suited them, or what they needed to in order to be taught a lesson, I just saw. I had no ulterior motive to my seeing, save want of friends who didn’t care that I couldn’t speak. That, I think, it what ultimately gave me the ability to step into the otherworld and to live in two realities at once.”

**Author's Note:**

> Since this was written for an assignment, it means there is research and a bibliography behind it, so if anyone is interested in said research here you go.
> 
> Chan, David. “L.A’s Secret Chinatown Has Only One Restaurant Left - but New Neighbors Are Arriving.” _L.A. Weekly_ , 12 Oct. 2017, www.laweekly.com/restaurants/the-gentrification-of-las-secret-old-chinatown-8526006.  
> Kendrick, Megan. “Virtual Tourisms.” _Virtual Tourisms_ , USC Department of History, 2008, vectors.usc.edu/issues/06_issue/virtualtourisms/.  
> King, Thomas. _The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative._ House of Anansi Press, 2011.


End file.
